flashcards historiography
in analysis of cases, we typically have a version of the facts: a …
background narrative
background narrative may be either:
- core of our analysis: with e.g. process tracing, improtant to know exactly what happned before you can theorize the causal mechanism
- e.g. Skocpol study of states and social revolutions, describe diff intitial conditions, similar outcomes and make explanation - the premises under which we analyze the case: not the only sources we use, but basic understanding of what happened
- e.g. Winward’s study of Indonesia presupposes a basic interpretation of what happned during the Suharto coup and the ensuing purges of communists
what is historiography?
historical accounts
- always have theoretical commitments
+ to one degree or the other, also personal and political commitments
-> no such thing as “what ruly happened”
Lustick: it’s imposible to produce “netural “ accounts that simply report facts = bc author must:
- choose which events matter
- assign meaning to events (what is this?)
- assign meaning baout the relationship between events (what caused this?)
aka: author must interpret the events by constructing a narrative
how to collect data from historiography?
- survey the lay of the land (state of the art) = identify a good-enoug sample
- need to understand what historians have said about the period of interest and the diff schools of historiography
- list of relevant publications
- does not need to be exhuastive + only need to read the main argument
- text analysis: active and critical reading
- active = read looking for specific elements
- critical = asses these elements
step 1: survey the lay of the land, some shortcuts =
articles
- journal(s) most likely to publish articles about the topic (review articles, articles related to the subject, reviews of books)
- collections of survey articles (annualreviews.com)
- search engines: Leiden library, Google Scholar
books
- library catalogues and other computerized catalogues
- pay attention to recent books and university presses
- many books have bibliographical essays (their literatire review): have done the work for you
- handbooks and collections
PhD dissertations and course syllabi
step 2: active and critical reading
Overall argument:
What does the author say? how is this positioned vis a vis he literature on the subject?
- look for it where it’s typically located: intro and conclusion
argument’s structure:
understand the specific claims of which the overall argument is formed and the evidence that supports these claims
read trying to answer these questions
- how sound is the argument? are there contadictions? what dos the author assume?
- is the evidence actually supporting the argument? how so?
how to use primary sources?
- understaand what archives and docs you want to look at -> reflect:
- fundamental questiosn: what happened? what actors were involved?
- scholarly problem: what are the debate’s terms and what evidence have historians used for their arguments? what does the evidence show? od i see contradictory info? - start from the easiest to acess: library and onine
- published collections of docs
- published sources: diaries, collections of personal papers etc.
- online institutional archives (e.g. ICJ docs)
- newspaper archives - when reading: start by piecing things together (e..g make timeline, weigh on events’ importance
- what was the key actors’ worldview? how did they intervene? - let source:
- create new questiosn and idetify new actors
- lead you to new primary sources
!”you’re not just gathering dataa as a kind of end in itself. you’re activel looking for answers. you’re trying to get a sense for what the story was” progressively you develop a sense for the texture, for the complexity, of a particular episode
why don’t i just use only primary sources?
(since historiography is never neutral)
- we would still need to create a narrative to interpret events
- it would be impractical/impossible to do comparative work
comparative case studies must build over previous research on historical accounts (historiography)
selection bias
making inferences based on partial accounts, incomplete info and misinterpretation
= risk of using historiographic data
-> challenge for social scientitists using historiograhy as data is NOT finding accoutns that give the facts (these don’t exist)
-> it is: what do i do given that there are diff interpretations?
example DAvid Moore - see slides
maybe ask him wat we need to know about this, bc he said that it was more elaborate than in the reading itself=> do we need to know it?
Lustick’s on mitigate selection bias
!these are not rules/procedures for distinguishing “accurate” vs “inaccurate” history: he is agnositc over if this is even possible
still: not all historical accounts should be treated as qually untrue or incomplete
look for traansparency and self-reflection, not “what really happened” (bc therea re diff poitns of view)
- transparency = about primary source collection adn a systematic analysis
- rreflection - on what can and cannot be said with the primary sourcdes at hand
- self-position = within scholarly research on a given period
Lustick’s 4best practices to mitigate selection bias and be more persuasive
! do not need to do them all, but can be combined
- be true to your school
- explaining variance in the historiography
- quasi-triangulation
4 explicit triage: more transparency
- be true to your school
- acknowledge historiographical terrain, lay of the land
- to construct a background narrative: choose a set of publications from one of the historiographical schools (not cherry-picking from diff publications across schools)
- locate the school within the debate + be transparent about its theoretical, personal and political commitments
pobrlem =sometimes a schoool of historiography has a too narrow focus to provide facts/events necessary for a compete background narrative (e.g. if it only focuses on nation-level, not regional)
reading: The re- searcher could then state that the history produced by
this chosen school would, for the purposes of the study
or for the research program within which the study is
embedded, be treated as if it were (so far as is known) a
description of what actually occurred in the past. Read- ers (as well as the author) would thereby be aware of
the boundaries of the claims made in the study
- explaining variance in the historiography
- treat diff pubications in your school as data poitns: construct the narrative with bits form the schooo , emphasizing facts and events on which historians converge
- discuss why there is divergence in some respects: diff soures? dismiss pieces of evidence? why?
problem = only works if the historiographical school is vast enough (many authors)
- it is celar that …, ohwever, whistorians wihtin this chools have diff acounts about the role of…
- quasi-triangulation
produce background narrative with facts and events corroborated by more than one school of historiography
= more persuasive
BUT: may spread myself too thinly… it is veery diff
- in Lustick case study he did something close to this: defined key empirical implications (“new facts” that might be observed outside the chosen historiography -> verify the consistency of these empirical implications with the historiography (do my chosen historians have evidence expicitly against them)
*new facts: Gladstone sympathy to Irish autonomy (visible in memoir)
